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I would bite AMDs hand off for a Mac mini equivalent with a reasonable graphics card and AMDs latest chips in. Everything in JavaScript/Docker land on projects

I would bite AMDs hand off for a Mac mini equivalent with a reasonable graphics card and AMDs latest chips in. Everything in JavaScript/Docker land on projects of scale takes an absolute age to run all the tests on a laptop. Fans are constantly on and throttling. It’s crazy that JS dev is this hardware inefficient...

ianai 7y ago
Uh maybe use better webdev stacks? I know I’m arguing against 20+ years of software practice, but Moores law is over.
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  I'm tempted to be very very sarcastic here but instead I'll just say clearly I'm not able to move the whole of 3000 person organisation onto a better stack because convincing people they would get no features for 3-6 months would be impossible.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Corporate America, am I right? But this is a safe place for us devs.
  - FpUser 7y ago
    Cant vouch for every situation but I think in general it actually pretty much achievable using slow attrition. From what I've observer while consulting corporate systems are collections of hundreds components. Start with one with clearly defined functionality and slowly chip away. Does not prevent from delivering new features. The only thing here is that it will introduce certain overhead and has to be carefully managed. Also one has to make sure if it has measurable ROI.
    - ianai 7y ago
      That’s possibly a trend from the places I’ve worked. The larger he organization the better the odds there are little niches of few users using specific software and website services. From around. 2x-5x GP’s size.
    - andy_ppp 7y ago
      Okay, fine. I will try for Elixir, Phoenix Live View and as little JS as possible and see how we go.
      - FpUser 7y ago
        I am not sure if Elixir is performance beast. But then again I do not know much about it other than it runs on VM.
        andy_ppp 7y ago
        Everyone thinks Elixir is slow until they use it and then realise throughput is often more important than absolute performance.
        FpUser 7y ago
        As I said I do not know much about Elixir so yo be the judge. I do however have doubts about throughput of well designed code running on VM being faster then that of native. My understanding is that on Erlang VM this throughput is achieved by using async and message passing patterns backed up by thread pools inside. All perfectly available for "low level" languages as well.
        andy_ppp 7y ago
        I understand, my preference is Elixir but while fast enough and scalable, it is a memory and cpu hog.
        nobleach 7y ago
        I wouldn't call Elixir/Phoenix a "top performer" in the league of Java/Vert.x or Rust/Actix (see TechEmpower benchmarks) but it does VERY well at chugging along and not falling to pieces. Its dev experience is really nice. Its missing type-safety, but, honestly, I quite enjoy messing with it.
- spamizbad 7y ago
  Moores law is still alive and kicking. Sure, it hit a midlife crisis, but it got divorced and bought a bitchin' corvette. Chiplets are the future and will ensure continued scaling.
  - DarmokJalad1701 7y ago
    > bitchin' corvette Is it bad that I read it as bitcoin corvette at first?
- tracker1 7y ago
  Biggest jumps I've seen for building node projects is a fast pipe for `npm ci` and a fast disk (nvme preferred).
b1gtuna 7y ago
Yes... a Mac Mini Pro with a workstation processor (doesn't have to be this particular beast) would be nice. Heck, even an i9 would be a welcome addition since it currently tops at i7 only.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Note the mini and even the nuc are pretty much laptop processors... an i7 laptop proc is nowhere near an i7 desktop cpu. The issue is the form factor doesn't allow for good cooling. There are options in the ITX space though, but they aren't cheap. Asus has a nice mini-itx x570 board if you want a relatively sff with power. https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Strix-X570-I-Gaming/ https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Strix-X570-I-Gaming/
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    They are - but even then the Hades Canyon and coming Ghost Canyon have some beef to them. Dual nic too, so options abound.
FpUser 7y ago
"It’s crazy that JS dev is this hardware inefficient..." That's the whole point of cloudy businesses. They can masquerade it under whatever pretense but the end result is that they want you to use more and more hardware resources where each abstract hardware unit gets healthy profit margin for infrastructure suppliers. Skipping cases like Facebook, Google, Netflix scale most of real life businesses can chug along just fine on dedicated servers with the software written in "normal" high performance languages. You would be surprised what $10,000 worth of modern hardware with high performance software can achieve.
- geodel 7y ago
  You are right. At one point it was Java's territory for this stuff. But now we have 10x more inefficient systems than Java.
  - quaquaqua1 7y ago
    Rapid prototyping will make a lot more money than cost savings on hardware in most cases
    - FpUser 7y ago
      1) Where did you get the idea that rapid prototyping is not possible with high performance languages? 2) You are making an uber-generic claim. Where is substantiation? I'll make another claim of the same nature: with this never ending rapid prototyping along with whatever they sell under Agile/SCRUM/etc methodology the end result is unbelievable mess of patchwork that after a while becomes to impossible to maintain and add new features to. It literally becomes house of cards
      - geodel 7y ago
        I think above poster may be right but in a sense that I do not prefer. E.g. most of these Electron based stuff looks like rapid prototypes and it made billions for companies like Slack etc. Meanwhile as a user I suffer from crappy and slow software and told to upgrade very reasonable hardware otherwise.
bcrosby95 7y ago
There are some small form factor cases that work pretty well. Not mac mini size but also not desktop size - maybe slightly larger than a console. They tend to be fairly expensive because they're niche but if you're using your computer for business it might be worth it.
badrequest 7y ago
Why is it crazy? Javascript is an interpreted language built for browsers, it was never meant to even know about hardware.
- nobleach 7y ago
  it's interpreted on first run. I'm pretty sure most JS engines, JSCore, SpiderMonkey, and V8 all JIT that code. And while JS was built for browsers, ever since the beginning, there's been server-side implementations. Most currently, Node and Deno are leading the pack. (But RhinoJS and GraalVM do exist)
OldSchoolJohnny 7y ago
I will never understand actual real world software developers using Macs for anything.
- thruhiker 7y ago
  Because they’re the right tool for the job. MacBooks aren’t perfect but I can’t imagine a productive workflow without them in my experience. Perhaps your requirements are different than others?
nikon 7y ago
This is what you want: https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/ https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/ I have the Intel version (running Hackintosh). It's very fast and quiet. Only downside is no Thunderbolt.
- programd 7y ago
  I've actually been looking at those vs the Intel NUC. The DeskMini looks great on paper, but ASRock seems to have some quality issues with those boards. That includes the Intel version of the box. More then 25% bad reviews on Newegg/Amazon last I looked. On the other hand, they're so cheap you can just buy two. That way you have another one on hand when the first one craps out in six months. My impression is that the NUC has better quality these days - if you can find one. The i5 and i7 models seem to have virtually disappeared from store shelves within the last month and nobody knows when they're getting more. Otherwise the NUC is amazing bang for the buck if you want a small form factor. The power of a Mac Mini for roughly half the price. And apparently you can Hackintosh it fairly easily. If you don't care about size, you can build a high quality 8/16 core Mini-ITX based AMD server with a mid-range video card for ML applications at less then $800.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    If you’re pondering a Nuc, hang tight for a bit. The next generation seem close and look pretty good. One of the more powerful options (and I believe not the top spec) is https://wccftech.com/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-element-pc-review-leaked/ https://wccftech.com/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-element-pc-revie... The reddit sub has a steady trickle of leaks. https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/
  - errantspark 7y ago
    My home desktop is a NUC + eGPU and it's been working great for me for the past year or so. I love that I can just turn the power to the eGPU off when I'm not using it and run my whole computing setup for something like ~40W.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Put all your build files on a RAM drive.
- philsnow 7y ago
  if you have enough ram to fit all your build files, your OS's block cache should take care of keeping them cached.
tracker1 7y ago
Single biggest boost to Node/JS projects I've had has been going to a good NVME drive, even from M/Sata SSD.

ianai 7y ago

Uh maybe use better webdev stacks? I know I’m arguing against 20+ years of software practice, but Moores law is over.

andy_ppp 7y ago
I'm tempted to be very very sarcastic here but instead I'll just say clearly I'm not able to move the whole of 3000 person organisation onto a better stack because convincing people they would get no features for 3-6 months would be impossible.
- ianai 7y ago
  Corporate America, am I right? But this is a safe place for us devs.
- FpUser 7y ago
  Cant vouch for every situation but I think in general it actually pretty much achievable using slow attrition. From what I've observer while consulting corporate systems are collections of hundreds components. Start with one with clearly defined functionality and slowly chip away. Does not prevent from delivering new features. The only thing here is that it will introduce certain overhead and has to be carefully managed. Also one has to make sure if it has measurable ROI.
  - ianai 7y ago
    That’s possibly a trend from the places I’ve worked. The larger he organization the better the odds there are little niches of few users using specific software and website services. From around. 2x-5x GP’s size.
  - andy_ppp 7y ago
    Okay, fine. I will try for Elixir, Phoenix Live View and as little JS as possible and see how we go.
    - FpUser 7y ago
      I am not sure if Elixir is performance beast. But then again I do not know much about it other than it runs on VM.
      - andy_ppp 7y ago
        Everyone thinks Elixir is slow until they use it and then realise throughput is often more important than absolute performance.
        FpUser 7y ago
        As I said I do not know much about Elixir so yo be the judge. I do however have doubts about throughput of well designed code running on VM being faster then that of native. My understanding is that on Erlang VM this throughput is achieved by using async and message passing patterns backed up by thread pools inside. All perfectly available for "low level" languages as well.
        andy_ppp 7y ago
        I understand, my preference is Elixir but while fast enough and scalable, it is a memory and cpu hog.
      - nobleach 7y ago
        I wouldn't call Elixir/Phoenix a "top performer" in the league of Java/Vert.x or Rust/Actix (see TechEmpower benchmarks) but it does VERY well at chugging along and not falling to pieces. Its dev experience is really nice. Its missing type-safety, but, honestly, I quite enjoy messing with it.
spamizbad 7y ago
Moores law is still alive and kicking. Sure, it hit a midlife crisis, but it got divorced and bought a bitchin' corvette. Chiplets are the future and will ensure continued scaling.
- DarmokJalad1701 7y ago
  > bitchin' corvette Is it bad that I read it as bitcoin corvette at first?
tracker1 7y ago
Biggest jumps I've seen for building node projects is a fast pipe for `npm ci` and a fast disk (nvme preferred).

b1gtuna 7y ago

Yes... a Mac Mini Pro with a workstation processor (doesn't have to be this particular beast) would be nice. Heck, even an i9 would be a welcome addition since it currently tops at i7 only.

tracker1 7y ago
Note the mini and even the nuc are pretty much laptop processors... an i7 laptop proc is nowhere near an i7 desktop cpu. The issue is the form factor doesn't allow for good cooling. There are options in the ITX space though, but they aren't cheap. Asus has a nice mini-itx x570 board if you want a relatively sff with power. https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Strix-X570-I-Gaming/ https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Strix-X570-I-Gaming/
- lostlogin 7y ago
  They are - but even then the Hades Canyon and coming Ghost Canyon have some beef to them. Dual nic too, so options abound.

FpUser 7y ago

"It’s crazy that JS dev is this hardware inefficient..." That's the whole point of cloudy businesses. They can masquerade it under whatever pretense but the end result is that they want you to use more and more hardware resources where each abstract hardware unit gets healthy profit margin for infrastructure suppliers. Skipping cases like Facebook, Google, Netflix scale most of real life businesses can chug along just fine on dedicated servers with the software written in "normal" high performance languages. You would be surprised what $10,000 worth of modern hardware with high performance software can achieve.

geodel 7y ago
You are right. At one point it was Java's territory for this stuff. But now we have 10x more inefficient systems than Java.
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  Rapid prototyping will make a lot more money than cost savings on hardware in most cases
  - FpUser 7y ago
    1) Where did you get the idea that rapid prototyping is not possible with high performance languages? 2) You are making an uber-generic claim. Where is substantiation? I'll make another claim of the same nature: with this never ending rapid prototyping along with whatever they sell under Agile/SCRUM/etc methodology the end result is unbelievable mess of patchwork that after a while becomes to impossible to maintain and add new features to. It literally becomes house of cards
    - geodel 7y ago
      I think above poster may be right but in a sense that I do not prefer. E.g. most of these Electron based stuff looks like rapid prototypes and it made billions for companies like Slack etc. Meanwhile as a user I suffer from crappy and slow software and told to upgrade very reasonable hardware otherwise.

bcrosby95 7y ago

There are some small form factor cases that work pretty well. Not mac mini size but also not desktop size - maybe slightly larger than a console. They tend to be fairly expensive because they're niche but if you're using your computer for business it might be worth it.

badrequest 7y ago

Why is it crazy? Javascript is an interpreted language built for browsers, it was never meant to even know about hardware.

nobleach 7y ago
it's interpreted on first run. I'm pretty sure most JS engines, JSCore, SpiderMonkey, and V8 all JIT that code. And while JS was built for browsers, ever since the beginning, there's been server-side implementations. Most currently, Node and Deno are leading the pack. (But RhinoJS and GraalVM do exist)

OldSchoolJohnny 7y ago

I will never understand actual real world software developers using Macs for anything.

thruhiker 7y ago
Because they’re the right tool for the job. MacBooks aren’t perfect but I can’t imagine a productive workflow without them in my experience. Perhaps your requirements are different than others?

nikon 7y ago

This is what you want: https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/ https://www.asrock.com/nettop/AMD/DeskMini%20A300%20Series/ I have the Intel version (running Hackintosh). It's very fast and quiet. Only downside is no Thunderbolt.

programd 7y ago
I've actually been looking at those vs the Intel NUC. The DeskMini looks great on paper, but ASRock seems to have some quality issues with those boards. That includes the Intel version of the box. More then 25% bad reviews on Newegg/Amazon last I looked. On the other hand, they're so cheap you can just buy two. That way you have another one on hand when the first one craps out in six months. My impression is that the NUC has better quality these days - if you can find one. The i5 and i7 models seem to have virtually disappeared from store shelves within the last month and nobody knows when they're getting more. Otherwise the NUC is amazing bang for the buck if you want a small form factor. The power of a Mac Mini for roughly half the price. And apparently you can Hackintosh it fairly easily. If you don't care about size, you can build a high quality 8/16 core Mini-ITX based AMD server with a mid-range video card for ML applications at less then $800.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  If you’re pondering a Nuc, hang tight for a bit. The next generation seem close and look pretty good. One of the more powerful options (and I believe not the top spec) is https://wccftech.com/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-element-pc-review-leaked/ https://wccftech.com/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-element-pc-revie... The reddit sub has a steady trickle of leaks. https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/
- errantspark 7y ago
  My home desktop is a NUC + eGPU and it's been working great for me for the past year or so. I love that I can just turn the power to the eGPU off when I'm not using it and run my whole computing setup for something like ~40W.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Put all your build files on a RAM drive.

philsnow 7y ago
if you have enough ram to fit all your build files, your OS's block cache should take care of keeping them cached.

tracker1 7y ago

Single biggest boost to Node/JS projects I've had has been going to a good NVME drive, even from M/Sata SSD.